Asia could switch to this cheaper option to satisfy its energy needs, says expert
Esther Ng, The New Paper 27 Nov 08;
ONE might expect that more energy will come from renewable sources in the future, but China, India and South-east Asia could possibly turn instead to a resource from the past — coal — thus contributing significantly to rising sea levels, said the head of the International Energy Agency (IEA).
According to Mr Nobuo Tanaka, world energy demand will expand by 45 per cent between now and 2030, with the fast-growing Asian economies being the biggest guzzlers, and more than a third of this will come from coal.
Compared to oil — whose price has been fluctuating in recent months — and natural gas, coal is a much cheaper source of energy as it is readily available, he said at the launch of the World Energy Outlook yesterday.
But, burning coal in electricity generating plants produces more carbon dioxide than oil or gas, thus contributing more to global warming. It also produces sulphur dioxide, a colourless gas that contributes to acid rain.
One way of discouraging countries from using coal would be to impose a levy on greenhouse gas emission or carbon pricing, he said. Likewise, there should be an incentive for the capture of carbon emission through carbon capture and storage (CCS) — a technique for trapping carbon dioxide as it is emitted from power plants, compressing it, and transporting it to a suitable storage site where it is injected into the ground.
However, Mr Tanaka said that CCS will not be commercially viable before 2030. He urged governments to make their coal plants “capture ready”, in tandem with carbon pricing.
Mr Tanaka admitted, though, that incentives will be necessary to get countries like Vietnam, Indonesia and China to invest in clean technology.
“CCS is costly and less efficient because it uses additional energy to capture carbon,” he said.
The challenge for Asian economies, he said, is to strike a balance between economic growth and sustainability. He called on governments to improve energy-efficiency by “investing more in the transport sector, exploring renewable energy sources like solar panels and wind turbines and green buildings”.
As for nuclear energy,Mr Tanaka said it was not a feasible option for Singapore as operating a nuclear plant requires substantial expertise, and having one just to power the Republic’s energy needs may be an overkill. Instead, the IEA chief said, a better option would be for nuclear energy to be shared across the South-east Asian region.
Earlier this month, ahigh-powered International Advisory Panel on Energy had suggested that a nuclear plant could not be dismissed from Singapore’s range of long-term energy solutions.
